3.Personal Development
Animal lover & pighead
As far as I can remember I always loved animals and wanted to keep any animal possible. I had weird ideas (e.g. different types of reptiles, house-pigs, monkeys) but finally I was only allowed to keep rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, fish, hamsters, cats, snails, turtles and stick insects. My dream was to become an animal doctor.
At the age of four I asked what meat, sausage and fish sticks contain. Knowing the answer I decided not to eat that anymore. So I became the first vegetarian in my family. Later on I convinced my sister and some friends to be vegetarian too. Up to today almost all of them still are vegetarian or eat very little meat and fish.
I had a passion to keep animals and creating little worlds for them. I built a variety of different cages, even for those animals I never would have the chance to get, and I was filled with joy.
Very early I started to resist the mainstream culture. For me, being “cool” was something embarrassing. I only wore my two favourite cord-pants and T-shirts and refused any new toiletries such as deodorant. At the age of fourteen I started to accept all the “modern” habits adults are supposed to have. For instance I became familiar with using a deodorant or a mobile phone in daily life. I was also the time when my thin, smooth hair turned to very wavy and after some months very curly, so I kind of felt like a new person.
When I started to read a lot about environmental pollution, deforestation, desertification, agricultural chemical concerns and animal testing, I had the wish to stop all of these degrading methods. It was the first time that I recognized that humans are in the process of disconnecting from nature whilst still they are nature. I developed the dream to live in an intact environment surrounded by a large variety of plants and animals.
Athletic childhood
At the age of five I started swimming and as time went on I did competitive swimming up to five times a week with competitions on the weekends. At the age of ten swimming dominated my life and I had no time for other hobbies and my friends. At the age of thirteen it was just too much being caught in a swimming pool every day and so I stopped this time consuming hobby. During my swimming period I did not experience real friendships with other swimmers, because our contact was rather superficial. Maybe because of the feeling of concurrence which was present all the time.
Horse riding was a new passion I developed after my swimming period. I went to various different horse farms to learn riding and made a lot of experiences. In the end I found a nearly perfect farm which was at the same time very crazy and weird. Living in the house of a married couple with compulsive hoarding behavior, where dirt, mice and excrements of animals dominates was very challenging in the beginning and it still is. The wife, my horse riding teacher, is a dentist. Nevertheless she has very bad teeth herself. But in terms of knowledge she is the most “intelligent” person I have ever met.
But living in a house looking worse and dirtier than the horse stable widened my tolerance towards different lifestyles. Still sometimes I reached my limit. But nevertheless they cared for me like I was their own daughter and I spend all my holidays there. The time on the horse farm contributed a lot to my wish to run my own little farm later on. It also widened my tolerance to accept people how they are.
I refused all activities which were “modern” or “in” at my age. My friend started standard dancing and when I lost a bet, she took me with her. It was a lot more fun than I thought in the beginning and I went dancing three times a week and discovered a new passion.
How my interests became noticeable in school
From the first up to the twelfth class I attended a private Montessori school. My parents could only afford it with the help of my grandfather and godmother. Consequently the families of my classmates belonged mostly to the upper class and lived in big houses and wore expensive clothes. However I never felt separated from them in a bad way and I never experienced the degradation of pupils.
Actually I was very adaptable to all groups and coped with all classmates in a peaceful way. For me it was always more comfortable having two best friends instead of a lot acquaintances. Through our “abnormal” activities in school, such as secretly saving food that kids who were full would have otherwise thrown in the garbage and countless activities which broke the school rules, we separated ourselves from all the “honest” pupils.
When I was in tenth grade I had the opportunity to go to South Carolina for three month, living with the family of my second cousin and attending the school there. It was a unique opportunity to get to know a different culture and school system. Through that experience I learned to appreciate the German school system to a certain extent. The school in South Carolina was not challenging at all and after a few weeks I was top pupil in the class even without speaking English fluently. I experienced the school as very patriotic. Every day we recited the Pledge of Allegiance, hands on our hearts and looking to the American flag. For me the school seemed backward in development in terms of common knowledge of the pupils but also in terms of the dress code. This experience contributed a lot to my understanding of cultural knowledge. I also tried to compare the American and the German system considering the different strategies how knowledge is made and by whom and how it is obtained and passed on.
In 2013 my friend and I joined the growing Foodsharing community in our city and we became completely obsessed about the whole foodsaving topic. For more than a year my family hardly needed to buy food in the supermarket and we saved a lot of money. I met a lot of people with an alternative lifestyle and got in touch with permaculture for the first time. I informed myself more about different alternative growing methods. Being in exchange with like-minded people helped me to think more critical and questioning the system. Growing up with a mother and father, who completely trust the system, never lead me to think differently. My long-term goal was now to run my own small organic farm and to do educational or advising work to enlighten what is going on in the world.
4.Section after school
After school I had my first experience with the pattern Tri-via, because I was free to decide what to do next. Very fast I decided to make a three and a half month internship on an organic farm. There I learned a lot about chickens (a two-purpose breed) and their symbiosis with their environment, because they were kept in mobile chicken-stall on a big field together with pigs and cows. I got to know the whole chicken cycle including hatching and slaughtering and all steps in between. Being a vegetarian, slaughtering was a real challenge the first time but in the end I thought it is necessary to know about it because it is a part of the whole. On the farm they also had a “permaculture demonstration area” which caused me to think more in natural cycles.
After two months on the farm a new apprentice as a farmer came to the farm and after one week we were a couple. He is also very interested in permaculture and taught me a lot of interesting things in terms of agriculture and permaculture.
I started my agriculture University program, although it was not focused on organic agriculture. I hold the view that I have to get to know the “conventional” big-scale agriculture, too. After some weeks I realized that the material taught in university is not similar to what I want to learn about agriculture and afterwards I understood that the domain of simple and complicate predominated the system . So I decided to quit my studies and looked for alternatives. That was the time when I met my second Tri-Via and at the same time it was a huge transition for me. Many weeks I thought about my life and I asked myself a lot of questions about the future and my longterm goals.
In retrospect I can say that it was the first time that I thought and reflected so much about life. Finally I came to the conclusion that I want to live a self-determined life with a high degree of self-sufficiency and not being dependent on higher structures. After weeks of research I found Gaia University and decided to start a Bachelor degree program which I hoped would support my pathway to self-sufficiency.
Because I was short in money to finance my Gaia University Studies I started to work on the farm again, but in different areas and moved in with my boyfriend on the farm. I worked as a dishwasher, waitress, seller, kitchen helper, agricultural assistant and groom. Especially the work with a cook showed me how unhappy people are with their work if they need to do it in order to earn money. For me it was a horrible imagination to live such a other-directed life like so many others.
Great inspirations for me were the PDC in France and the IPC in London in September 2015.
In the end of September my boyfriend and I moved to the ecovillage “Lebensgarten Steyerberg” in Northern Germany. We are both working in the permaculture area there and I am involved in an educational school project.
Click Here to see my Agricultural Un/Learning Story in my life.
Conclusion
Due to my well-cared childhood I was mainly not aware what was going on in the world. I had the opportunity to observe the events which were happening in the world by myself and in an unbiased way. Through my observations I came to the conclusion that if humans won't change their behaviour, it will lead to an extinction of a lot of species including humanity itself.
The possibility I see, is to start by myself and trying to really live sustainable without degrading our earth. By setting a positive example I hope to be able to inspire other people to do the same.
5.OP-Reflection
This Output Package helped me to reflect my life up to now by dividing my life in different layers. I started to think about my roots and the environment which goes with them. I also thought a lot about the influence of my family on my character development. E.g. the extended family and my experiences with different cultures which I almost all experienced through my family.
In the second layer I tried to clarify what interests and hobbies I have had and why I did them by asking myself the questions: Was it my own idea? Why? Was it the idea of my mother or a friend?How did they shape me?
And in the third layer I looked for “Life contingency” events which gave me a new feeling of life and were therefore essential for me.
It was not difficult for me to write stories down, but it was more challenging to decide what stories are the essential ones.
By looking at my past experiences and events the LCR helped me to internalize that I am able to design willful my future towards eco-logical/social regeneration.